How do Fire Ant Find Food
To search for food, foraging worker ants leave the nest or mound and wander randomly. Upon discovery of a food source, they head straight back to the colony, using their stingers to periodically mark the ground and leave a chemical pheromone trail (watch video). When they reach their colony or colony "outpost" (the end of a subterranean tunnel radiating away from the colony where forager ant "reserves” congregate), additional worker ants follow the pheromone trail to the newly found food source. Those ants retrieve the food and return to the colony, also marking the pheromone trail laid down by the first group of ants. In a short period, many more ants follow the foraging trail, quickly arriving at the source and dominating the site to protect it from competitors.
How Do fire ant protect itself from predators
-Bodies Built for Defense
Ants' bodies are divided into three main parts: head, thorax and abdomen. On either side of the ant's mouth are its mandibles, pincer-like structures they use for carrying food, digging nests and fighting. Aside from mandibles of varying size depending on the species, ants may also have stingers used for defense against predators. They may also have a poison sack located inside the abdomen.
-Chemical Warnings
When in danger, an ant releases a pheromone signaling its need for help to nearby ants who will rally to his defense.
-Nest Defenses
Ants build their homes in large colonies underground. They conceal their underground nest's entrance with simple hills of dirt. Some ants pack this dirt hard, and other are known to build high mounds several feet in the air. This protects their vast network of tunnels from invasion, therefore protecting their queen, other worker ants, ant young and their food supply. The environments that some species of ants live in -- like dense rain forests -- can also be used to camouflage and further protect the colony.
Sleeping Habits
Do ants sleep?
YES, THEY DO - but not in the sense we understand sleep. Research conducted by James and Cottell into sleep patterns of insects (1983) showed that ants have a cyclical pattern of resting periods which each nest as a group observes, lasting around eight minutes in any 12-hour period. Although this means two such rest periods in any 24-hour period, only one of the rest periods bears any resemblance to what we would call sleep. Mandible and antennae activity is at a much lower level (usually up to 65 per cent lower) than during the other rest period in one 24-hour period, indicating a much deeper "resting" phase. Basing and McCluskey in 1986 used brain activity recorders on black, red, and soldier ants to determine whether the deeper resting period constituted actual "sleep". A steep decline in brain wave fluctuations supported the "sleep" hypothesis in black and red ants, but surprisingly showed a higher level of brain activity in soldier ants in a deep resting phase.
